All organizations have ethics programs which consist of both explicit and implicit parts. This paper defines corporate ethics programs and identifies a number of their components. Corporate ethics programs'' structural and behavioral dimensions are proposed which may allow further examination of such program components and their impacts. Finally, fifteen propositions are suggested which describe the influence of founder values, competitive pressures, leadership, and organizational problems on corporate ethics programs and the manageability of such programs.

This study was designed to survey the extent to which private companies in Sweden take structural measures within the field of business ethics: Codes of Ethics; Ethics Committees; Ethics Officers and Ethics Training. This was done in two steps. Through a nation-wide telephone survey, a population of "active" companies were identified. These companies received a questionnaire with detailed questions regarding the design, usage and effects of these measures. The percentage of active companies were found to be a high 46%. National (...) and industry characteristics are proposed as explanatory factors. (shrink)

In this article we discuss what are the implications for improving the design of corporate ethics programs, if we focus on the moral motivation accounts offered by main ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and utilitarianism offer different criteria of judgment to face moral dilemmas: Aristotle's virtues of character, Kant's categorical imperative, and Mill's greatest happiness principle are, respectively, their criteria to answer the question "What is the right thing to do?" We look at ethical theories from a different perspective: (...) the question we ask is "Why should I do the right thing?" In other words, we deal with the problem of moral motivation, and we examine the different rationale the main ethical theories provide. We then point out the relation between moral motivation and the concept of rationality in the different approaches - is acting morally seen as an expression of rational behavior? Our analysis of moral motivation provides a useful framework to improve the understanding of the relationships between formal and informal elements of corporate ethics programs, emphasizing the importance of the latter, often overlooked in compliance-focused programs. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of moral imagination can provide a unifying approach to enhance the effectiveness of corporate ethics programs, by providing an intangible asset that supports the implementation of their formal components into management decision making. (shrink)

Board composition, insider participation on compensation committees, and director compensation practices can potentially cause conflicts of interest between directors and shareholders. If these corporate governance structures result in situations where actions beneficial to directors do not also benefit shareholders, then shareholders may suffer.Corporate ethics programs usually address conflicts of interest that may arise in the firm''s activities. Some boards of directors take active roles in their firms'' ethics programs by actively overseeing the programs. This paper empirically examines the relationship between (...) ethics programs and potential conflicts of interest and the relationship between board involvement in a firm''s ethics program and potential conflicts of interest. (shrink)

The ethics research community has all but ignored issues of oversight ethics – the vices and virtues of overseers. This study develops a conceptual framework for exploring the ethics of oversight and provides insights into the design of codes of ethics for oversight institutions and for overseers. Analysis of business licensing in Israel reveals prospective and retrospective oversight ethics problems at the levels of national and local policy and implementation: Overseers failed to act on knowledge of breaches of business licensing (...) stipulations and took action known to be slow and ineffective; policymakers neglected their duty to enact significant policy change in an oversight system that was clearly not working. Partially as a result of these oversight failures, over one third of Israeli businesses are unlicensed, 23 people were killed in the collapse of an unlicensed banquet hall, 2 major fires erupted in the same shopping mall, and a fire in a fertilizer warehouse very nearly became a mega-disaster. (shrink)

The increase of scandals in the business sector is forcing many companies to examine their corporate ethical behavior with a view toward rebuilding their corporate value system. This article describes how value-system reconstruction must proceed in a company and demonstrates that corporate ethics can only become plausible if based on a corporate ethical ethos. It outlines a five-step development plan of management strategies toward rebuilding a company's value system on this corporate ethos through: corporate policy and strategy reformulation; corporate ethical (...) code promulgation and value-statement formulation; management ethical training and corporate ethical education; and corporate ethical performance evaluation. The role of the corporate ethical consultant is also outlined to illustrate how corporate ethical consulting can provide the specialized services designed to insure an enduring management ethical upgrading and to improve a company's corporate ethical performance record. The discussion indicates how corporate ethical consulting promotes good business through its capacity to deliver industry credibility and company security. (shrink)

Establishing a cosmopolitan ethical culture for a multinational company requires special effort above and beyond that needed for standard domestic ethics initiatives. This articles discusses some of the perils and prospects involved in international corporate ethics programs, and recommends some key guiding principles.

One of the main objectives of an ethics program is to improve the ethical culture of an organization. To date, empirical research treats at least one of these concepts as a one-dimensional construct. This paper demonstrates that by conceptualizing both constructs as multi-dimensional, a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between the two concepts can be achieved. Through the employment of the Corporate Ethical Virtues Model, eight dimensions of ethical culture are distinguished. Nine components of an ethics program are identified. (...) To assess the relationship between ethics programs and ethical culture, a survey was conducted of 4,056 members of the U. S. working population. The results show that the relationships between the components of an ethics program and the dimensions of ethical culture differ in strength, nature, and significance. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Efforts to institutionalize ethics in corporations have been discussed without first addressing the desirability of norm conformity or the possibility that the means used to elicit conformity will be coercive. This article presents a theoretical context, grounded in models of social control, within which ethics initiatives may be evaluated. Ethics initiatives are discussed in relation to variables that already exert control in the workplace, such as environmental controls, organizational controls, and personal controls.

In response to recent scandals in the business world, many corporations have adopted various kinds of ethics programs for their employees: ethical codes, ethical training courses, compliance officers, ethical committees, and social audits. This article outlines some of the most common points of discussion pertaining to corporate ethics programs in particular and ethics in the workplace in general: whether corporations should adopt ethics programs in the first place, how such programs should be designed more exactly, and what specific values of (...) workplace ethics such programs should include. (shrink)

Many organizations offer their employees the opportunity to voice their opinions about work-related issues because of the positive consequences associated with offering such an opportunity. However, little attention has been given to the possibility that offering voice may have negative effects as well. We propose that negative consequences are particularly likely to occur when employees perceive the opportunity to voice opinions to be “pseudo voice”—voice opportunity given by managers who do not have the intention to actually consider employee input (i.e., (...) managerial disregard). The effects of this kind of deception were examined by means of a survey among employees ( N = 137) and managers ( N = 14) of a Dutch healthcare organization. We hypothesized and found that perceived pseudo voice led to reduced voice behavior and, as a result, increased intragroup conflict. These results imply that while offering voice opportunity is mostly seen as an effective management strategy, negative effects are likely to occur when a manager is perceived to try to deceive employees by pretending to be interested in their points of view. (shrink)

This empirical study of Fortune 1000 firms assesses the degree to which those firms have adopted various practices associated with corporate ethics programs. The study examines the following aspects of formalized corporate ethics activity: ethics-oriented policy statements; formalization of management responsibilities for ethics; free-standing ethics offices; ethics and compliance telephone reporting/advice systems; top management and departmental involvement in ethics activities; usage of ethics training and other ethics awareness activities; investigatory functions; and evaluation of ethics program activities. Results show a high (...) degree of corporate adoption of ethics policies, but wide variability in the extent to which these policies are implemented by various supporting structures and managerial activities. In effect, the vast majority of firms have committed to the low cost, possibly symbolic side of ethics management (e.g., adoption of ethics codes and policies, etc.). But firms differ substantially in their efforts to see that those policies or codes actually are put into practice. (shrink)